Faculty Book: Mario DiGangi

Mario DiGangi

Sexual Types: Embodiment, Agency, and Dramatic Character from Shakespeare to Shirley(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)

Building on feminist and queer scholarship, this book demonstrates how sexual types on the early modern stage—such as the sodomite, the tribade (a woman-loving woman), the narcissistic courtier, the citizen wife, the bawd, and the court favorite—function as sites of ideological contradiction. On the one hand, these sexual types are vilified and disciplined for violating social and sexual norms; on the other hand, they can take the form of dynamic, resourceful characters who expose the limitations of the categories that attempt to define and contain them. In bringing sexuality and character studies into conjunction with one another, Sexual Types provides illuminating new readings of familiar plays, such as Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale, and of lesser-known plays by John Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, and James Shirley. Mario DiGangi (Prof., Lehman) is on the doctoral faculty in English.